Yes No

Go coding/fishing/diving...

Is life peachy?

Stick head in sand.

Sunday, July 1, 12

Meritocracy in KDE

Part of the “Companies are Community” series

Akademy 2012

Mirko Boehm (mirko@kde.org)

Sunday, July 1, 12

CWD: ~miroslav@silberpfeil: >whoami

- KDE Contributor since 1997:-- Hacking (kdecore, kdepim, applications)-- board member 1999 to 2006-- Desktop Summit 2011- FSFE Germany team member- researching Free Software and Intellectual Property issues at TU Berlin- married, two kids, lives in BerlinCWD: ~miroslav@silberpfeil: >

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How things get better - an algorithmic perspective.

Yes No

Take appropriate action.

Go coding/fishing/diving...

Is life peachy?

Sunday, July 1, 12

Observe Part I

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Is life peachy at KDE?

• Surprise: Yes, it is. (Mostly.)

• KDE - Largest meritocratic volunteer driven FLOSS community.

• Outstanding product.

• Stable contributor base, easy to join, healthy fluctuation.

• Role model for how communites work.

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Symptoms of Friction

• Users complaining about lack of quality improvements.

• Users complaining about lack of transparency.

• Contributors leaving for non-technical reasons.

• Failure to integrate commercial ecosystem.

• Problems establishing vendor pickup.

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How are others doing?

• Open Governance Index: “Equal and fair treatment of developers – ‘meritocracy’ – has become the norm, and is expected by developers with regard to their involvement in open source projects.” [1]

• Here is Sebas’ and my assessment of KDE’s rating: 74%, second best.

Android Qt Symbian MeeGo Mozilla WebKit Linux KDE Eclipse

100

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Perc

ent

Poin

ts

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Reflect Part II

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Voice or Exit

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Community

• Meritocracy of all individuals who contribute

• Self-directed

• All doors open approach

• (S)He who does the work decides

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KDE e.V.

• Stakeholder’s association of volunteer contributors

• Only individual membership, no entities

• Invite-only membership

• Passive, supporting membership models

• Secret by default

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The role of commercial contributors

Formal Economy Informal Economy

Peer Production

Companies Volunteers

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Act! Part III

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Our vision: Improve by default

Get better in every iteration

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Proposal: Extend the Code of Conduct

Contributor’s Rights and Responsibilities

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Contributor’s Responsibilities

• Be open about goals

• Be transparent about activities

• Be committed longer-term

• Be generous

• Be humble

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New: Contributor’s Rights

• Influence development

• Be an equal among peers

• Benefit from own contributions

• Be part of the community, collaborate

• Exercise the Four Freedoms

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Proposal: Open by Default

Improve Transparency

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Minimize Discrimination

• Technical vs. non-technical contributors

• Volunteers vs. companies

• Users vs. contributors vs. e.V. members

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Thank you for listening! Questions?

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References

• [1] http://www.visionmobile.com/product/open-governance-index • Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44523343@N00/474411576/

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